> switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)

There's always a balance and trade-off here.

2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.

In my opinion I would very much prefer 24" or 25" at 1440p with native scaling which is ~120 PPI. I personally run both a 25" 1440p display and another 24" 1440p display at 1x. I still consider going from 1080p to 1440p one of the biggest quality of life upgrades I've encountered when I made the switch 7 years ago. It's the same level of "wow this is great" as going from a HDD to SSD.

Before there were shortages you could get a high quality IPS panel monitor from a reputable brand (Dell, ViewSonic) with low input latency for around $300. 4k at 1.5x also gives you the same real estate as 1440p but with higher PPI but I don't know how crisp that will be given the scaling ratio.

>2x scaling with 4k really means you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.

Yes and no. With much clearer looking text, I can use smaller fonts (13 -> 11 in IntelliJ) than on regular 1080p displays, so there's _some_ difference.

> 1.5x also gives you the same real estate as 1440p but with higher PPI but I don't know how crisp that will be given the scaling ratio.

1.5x is nice on a 27 inch 4k with 14+ fonts. HiDPI monitors do seem to have bloom, so slightly bigger fonts with higher DPI are good to have.

For reference I'm at 25" 1440p with a font size of 9 using Consolas. Things look pretty crisp at native scaling and also very comfortable to read with no strain.

In terms of viewing space this fits (4) side by side code windows at 80 characters with a little bit of breathing room.

Yep, 27" 4k at 1.5x (plasma) I can have 50/50 or 60/40 with font size 14 and get 110+ characters, not just 80. 60/40 would be for an IDE with a bar or two on the side and still get almost 110 columns in the editor/console comfortably without eye strain. With 144 DPI fonts on plasma (using Hack), fonts seem plenty crisp to me down to size 5.

For screen size, I think there is some screen size that's most comfortable to view, and I want to say that's like ~40% of the human FOV... so, I think a 24" monitor and 15" laptop are most comfortable for me, but 27" might be a bit nicer if you're using it for media as well.

I miss read a bit when replying in the other comment, for 4 side-by-side 80 column windows, you'd need to bring the font size to 9, which isn't as comfortable as 14 for me in my side-by-side setup, but then 1.25x is also an option.

> you end up with the same screen real estate as 1080p.

Is that even a problem? I am not buying better screen to torture my eyes. IMO. A smaller sharper text won't really be easier to see compared to a larger but blurrer text.

I think so, but it's personal opinion.

I wear glasses and 25" at 1440p has very clear text. I feel no strain. Even the grey text on HN is very readable from about 32" (81 cm) away which is my normal viewing distance. It's readable without much strain from 45" (114 cm) but I wouldn't want to use things that far away.

For reference my work issued laptop is a 13" 2020 MBP so I have experienced retina. I would take the 1440p screen real estate at ~120 PPI (24"/25") 10 out of 10 times vs going back to 1080p but with higher PPI. There's also the added benefit of never having to think or worry about poor UI scaling since not all apps handle scaling well, but that's not a deciding factor in my mind, more of a nice to have.

Then probably this is the reason.

I never need to run app and editor side by side on same screen. I always have 2+ screen in any setup. So I just threw it to another if I want ever want to run it side by side. And besides, I seldom codes with my 27 4K screens.

They ares used mostly on browsing web/gaming. which you can't use something side by side isn't even a issue.

Yes, for developers screen real estate is everything. You want crisp fonts and lots of space. Both for just code editing and of course for testing, where you often run your application side by side with your code window. At work I still use my old 30" 2560x1600 screen (basically the old cinema display) and its just gorgeous. My iMac is way sharper, that is also great for image processing, but already noticeable smaller. You can squeeze a bit more onto the screen due to the higher resolution. My 24" 4k screen works with a scaled resolution (2300 horizontal resolution) but its considerably worse. A hidpi 30" screen would be a dream.

> with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS

I believe that depends entirely on the desktop environment. Sway does real fractional scaling rather than the idiotic downscaling way.

No, Sway supports downscaling. Augmenting downscaling with exact fractional scales is still in discussion: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i... (And Firefox has a prototype implementation using wp_viewporter but you have to set the scale manually.)

Of course, independent of the desktop environment, you could just tell supporting applications to just manually render bigger UI (exactly how you would on X11 with some TOOLKIT_DPI variable thing per UI toolkit) and keep the monitor scale in the compositor at 1x. That's probably what you've been doing. That doesn't support multiple monitors with varying scale.